The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

The free power of Selection in Love! Yes; that is the true Female Franchise. It must be regained by woman, to be used by her to ennoble the sex relation and thereby to cleanse society of the unfit. The means by which this most important end can be attained will be brought about by giving woman such training and education and civic rights, as well as the framing of such laws and changes in the rights of property inheritance, as shall render her economically independent. Existing marriage is a pernicious survival of the patriarchal age. The "patriarch's" wife was significantly reckoned in the same category with a man's "ox" and his "ass," which any other male was forbidden "to covet." The wife was the husband's—her owner's private property—and the curse of this dependence and the old ferocious potestas and manus, from which the Roman wife freed herself, are upon women to-day. With the regaining of their economic freedom by women—by whatever means this is to be accomplished—a truer marriage will be brought within reach of every one, and the sexual relationship will be freed from the jealous chains of ownership that cause such bitter mistrusts in the wreckage of our loves.

Mating will be a much more complex affair, and yet one much more directly in harmony with the welfare of the race. A recognition of the pre-natal claims of the child is the new Ethic that is slowly but surely dawning on womankind and on man. He who destroys human life, however unfit that life may be, is remorselessly punished by society, but the woman and man who beget diseased and imbecile children—the necessarily unfit—are not only exonerated from sin, but applauded by both Church and State. Could moral inconstancy go further than this? It is only in the begetting of men that breeding from the worst stocks may be said to be the rule. As long as in our ideas on these questions superstition remains the guide there is nothing to hope for and much to fear. The new ideal is only beginning, and beginning with a tardiness that is a reproach to human foresight. But herein lies the glad hope of the future. I place my trust in the enlightened conscience of the economically emancipated mothers, and in the awakened fathers, to work out some scheme of sexual salvation as will ensure a race of sounder limb and saner intelligence than any that has yet appeared in our civilisation.

It is woman, not man, who must fix the standard in sex. The problems of love are linked on to the needs of the race. Nature has, as we have seen, made various experiments as to which of the sexes was to be the predominant partner in this relation. But the decision has been made in the favour of the mother. She it is who has to play the chief part in the racial life. There is no getting away from this, in spite of the many absurdities that man has set up, as, for instance, St. Paul's grandmotherly old Tory dogma, making "man the head of the woman."

The differences between woman and man are deep and fundamental. And, lest there be any who fear the giving back to woman of her power, let me say that in this change there will be no danger of unsexing, least of all of the unsexing of woman. Nature would not permit it, even if she in any foolishness of revolt sought such a result, for it is her body that is the sanctuary of the race. Love and courtship will not, indeed, be robbed of any charm, that would be fatal, but they will be freed from the mockeries of love that have always selfishness in them, jealous resentments and fearing distrusts—the man of the woman, not less than the woman of the man. To-day coquetry serves not only as a prelude to marriage, but very often serves as a substitute for it; an escape from the payment of the sacrifices which fulfilled love claims. There is a confusion of motives which now force women and men alike from their service to the race. Sex must be freed from all unworthy necessities. Courtship must be regarded, not as a game of chance, but as the opening act in the drama of life. And the woman who comes to know this must play her part consciously, realising in full what she is seeking for; then, indeed, no longer will her sex be to her a light or a saleable thing. At present economic and social injustices are strangling millions of beautiful unborn babes.

There is another error that I would wish to clear up now. It is a tenet of common belief that in all matters of sex-feeling and sex-morality the woman is different from, and superior to, the man. I find in the writings of almost all women on sex-subjects, not to speak of popular novels, an insistence on men's grossness, with a great deal in contrast about the soulful character of woman's love. Even so illuminated a writer as Ellen Key emphasises this supposed trait of the woman again and again. Another woman writer, Miss May Sinclair, in a brilliant "Defence of Men" (English Review, July 1912), speaks of "the superior virtue of women" as being "primordially and fundamentally Nature's care." And again, woman "has monopolised virtue at man's expense," which the writer, with the most perfect humour and irony, though apparently quite unconscious, regards as "men's tragedy." The woman has received the laurel crown by "Nature's consecration of her womanhood to suffering," the man "has paid with his spiritual prospects as she has paid with her body."

Now, from this view of the sex relationship I most utterly dissent. I believe that any difference in virtue, even where it exists in woman, is not fundamental, that it is against Nature's purpose that it should be so; rather it has arisen as a pretence of necessity, because it has been expected of her, nourished in her, and imposed on her by the unnatural prohibitions of religious and social conventions. The female half of life has not been pre-ordained to suffer any more than the male half: this belief has done more to destroy the conscience of woman than any other single error. You have only to repeat any lie long enough to convince even yourself of its truth. But assuredly free woman will have to yield up her martyr's crown.

I grant willingly that men often talk brutally of sex, but I am certain that few of them think brutally. We women are so easily deceived by the outside appearance of things. The man who calls "a spade a spade" is not really inferior to him who terms it "an agricultural implement for the tilling of the soil." And women also express their sensuality in orgies of emotion, in hypocrisies of chastity, and in many other ways that are really nothing but a subtle sensuality disguised.

I confess that I doubt very much the existence of any special soulful character in woman's love. I wish that I didn't. But my experience forces me to admit that this is but another of those delusions which woman has wrapped around herself. Of course I may be wrong. I find Professor Forel and other distinguished psychologists lending their support to this idol of the woman's superior sexual virtue. Krafft-Ebing goes much further, holding "that woman is naturally and organically frigid." It may be then that some difference does exist in the driving force of passion in men and women. I do not know the exact character of men's love to compare it with my own, and I hesitate to write with that assurance of the passions of the other sex with which they have written of mine. Yet I believe that the male receiving life from the female is not more mindful of the physical needs of love than the woman, though possibly she has less understanding of its joys. For the woman with a much more complex sexual nature is carried by passion further than the male; the continuance of life rests with her. Under this imperative compulsion woman, if needs be, will break every commandment in the Decalogue and suffer no remorse for having done so. I think this seeking to give life remains a necessary element in the loves of all women. At its lowest it will stoop to any unscrupulousness. Bernard Shaw tells us that "if women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end to the race." Perhaps this is true. Yet I think woman's love is always different in its fundamental essence from the excitements of the male. We throw the whole burden of sex-desire on to men, because we have not yet faced the truth that they are our helpless agents in carrying on Nature's most urgent work. It has been so from the beginning, since that first primordial mating when the hungry male-cell gained renewal of life from the female, it is so still, I believe it will be thus to the end.

It is when we come to the emotions and actions connected with the maternal instinct in woman that we reach the real point of the difference between the sexes. In its essential essence this belongs to women alone. The male may be infected with the reproduction energy (we have witnessed this in its finest expression among birds, where the parental duties are shared in and, in some cases, carried out entirely by the male), but man possesses, as yet, its faint analogy only. It is the most primary of all woman's qualities, and, being fundamental, it is, I believe, unalterable, and any attempt to minimise its action is very unlikely to lead to progress. It is a two-sexed world; women and men are not alike; I hope that they never will be.

This radical truth is so plain. Yet it seems to me that in the present confusion many women are in danger of overlooking it. We saw in an earlier chapter how very early in the development of life it was found by Nature's slow but certain experiments that the establishment of two sexes in different organisms, and their differentiation, was to the immense advantage of progress. This initial difference leads to the functional distinctions between the female and the male, but it goes much further than this, finding its expression in many secondary qualities, not on the physical side alone, but on the mental and psychical, and is, indeed, a saturating influence that determines the entire development of the organism into the feminine or the masculine character. Take again the fact that this dynamic action of sex has manifested itself in a continual progress through the uncounted centuries. Developed by love's selection, the differentiation of the sexes increased in the evolution of species, and as the differentiation increased the attraction also increased, until in all the higher forms we find two markedly different sexes, strongly drawn together by the magnetism of sex, and fulfilling together their separate uses in the reproductive process. These are the natural features of sex-distinction and sex-union.